1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to musical apparatus. In particular the invention pertains to a melodic processor which generates melodic variations and presents these variations in many different user selected ways as raw melodic data for the user (composer, songwriter or improviser) to use as thematic variations in their compositional song writing and improvisational processes and products.
2. Summary of the Prior Art
A key attribute of the composer, songwriter or improviser is an ability to craft finished works from a thematic idea. The fundamental skill is thematic development. This skill set consists of a number of techniques including, retrograde, pitch inversion, diminution, augmentation, permutation and so on. The art of thematic development (composition) is predominantly taught by private teachers and teachers employed by tertiary institutions. This enterprise is hindered by the absence of a teacher, student and classroom friendly technology able to produce variations on any given theme in very short times (for example, within seconds and/or minutes). It is also hindered by a reliance on the variability of standards of individual teacher capability.
The operational process of composition is to originate or nominate a theme, generate melodic variations and select and arrange these, with other material, into a thematically cohesive piece.
The absence of a user friendly technology, able to produce a user determined number of variations on any given theme, discourages the budding composer, songwriter or improviser, from generating melodic variations, which terminates or prolongs the compositional process, and reduces the chances of successfully producing thematically cohesive results, that is, a song.
The disadvantage of current compositional teaching and composing practises is that it takes so much time (at least a minimum of hours, typically of days and not unusually of weeks) to compose themes and variations. As noted the time involved stops a writer from completing a work, or at minimum, prolonging the process. Success under current convention is dependent on the composer accessing the state of “being in the mood” rather than accessing the variations unique to any theme.
No prior melodic processing technology delivers any user determined number of variations on a theme to a composer or songwriter. Nor does any such technology allow the composer to choose the character of their variations, for example, the number of continuous melodic steps and initial and/or final note in a phrase.
The absence of a user friendly, melodic processing technology also discourages the improvisational performer, teacher or student from developing a strong melodic improvisational technique.
The melodic improviser needs to be able to compose thematic variations on any given melody like a composer, except that the improviser outputs in real time whereas the composer outputs in delayed time, for example, when the musician reads from the composers score anytime after it has been written. So, a composer composes musical pieces for performers to play at a different time or times in the future. While the improviser is the composer and performer, composing and performing in real time with no intention of necessarily improvising that melody ever again.
One disadvantage of the current improvisational art is a teacher emphasis on harmonic improvisational techniques. This is born of the absence of an appropriate melodic processing technology.
The song writing process is the same as composition with one key difference; lyrics are needed to fit a melody or a melody is needed to fit a lyric. Songwriters also need a way to apprehend melodic variations for any given melodic or lyrical phrase. This skill is essentially the same skill as thematic composition and melodic improvisation. This skill too is taught by private and institutional teachers and is constrained also by the absence of a user friendly, melodic processing technology that delivers any user determined number of variations on a theme to the songwriter.
Some melodic composing arts for the novice have been produced. These automatically compose a melody in real time. The key purpose of these composers is to compose music pieces comprising melody and harmony, for users with nil or little musical knowledge and to be automatically played by sound generators within the composer as a completed piece.
In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 4,399,731 discloses an apparatus for automatically composing a music piece, the apparatus comprises a storage means that stores plural kinds of pitch data. From this memory, at random extraction is made of the pitched data agreeing with predetermined musical conditions. The output from the apparatus is the generation of music sound and/or a music score.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,010 discloses a method and device for transforming melodic notes of a piece of music into different notes to obtain a new piece of music and transformation is performed in accordance with predetermined rules stored in a transforming means. The musical notes inputted into the apparatus are compared with a database of notes stored in a memory until a corresponding counterpart note is found. The output of the apparatus is a musical piece which is a counterpart of the original inputted musical piece.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,451,709 discloses an automatic composer for composing a melody in real time. Here various databases are used to generate new melody notes from old melody notes. The new melody notes are analysed based on melody pattern rules and composition conditions, wherein the output of the automatic composer is a song. The automatic composer also enables simultaneous composing and playing of the melody in real time.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,153 discloses a chord progression selection apparatus that includes a chord progression database containing a large collection of practical chord progressions with various kinds of style and harmonic rhythm. An analysing feature of the apparatus evaluates the suitability between a chord progression and a melody supplied from the user based on stored melody pattern rules.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,740 discloses an automatic composer which forms a rhythm pattern. An entire musical piece is composed in accordance with at least one of a sequence of tone pitches and a sequence of tone durations where the sequences define the inputted portion of the musical piece. This provides automatic harmony evaluation and includes editing or correcting facilities for a music piece.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,088,380 discloses a melody analyser which analyses a given melody with respect to individual melody notes within.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,003,860 discloses an automatic accompaniment apparatus which plays in real time an accompaniment line formed by a succession of harmonic and nonharmonic tones. The apparatus determines the key in the current chord interval from a series of chords supplied from a musical piece. An arpeggio generator forms the arpeggio portion of the accompaniment line and a nonharmonic generated produces the nonharmonic portion of the accompaniment line.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,643 discloses an automatic composer of a music piece which comprises inputting a melody and a chord progression forming part of a music piece wherein a melody analyser extracts parameters characterising the input melody and a melody generator develops a melody forming the remainder of the music piece. The composer also provides a database of musical knowledge which is used by both the melody analyser and generator. Here the outputted synthesised melody will fit well with the input melody.
The key limitation of the abovementioned inventions is that they do not provide a non novice composer, song writer or improviser with raw melodic data from which they can make their own aesthetic and artistic selection and stylistic rules. Moreover these inventions deliver a final composition that excludes the user from the creative process.
Some random variation melodic composing arts for the non novice have been produced. Dr T's Keyboard Controlled Sequencer, by Emile Tobenfield© 1986–88 features a Programmable Variations Generator that supplies a random melodic generation capability. Vision 1.02, by Opcode Systems© 1985–89, features a generated sequence function which allows a user selected predefined pitch sequence and a user selected predefined rhythm sequence to be combined and generated into a new melody.
The uncontrollable randomness of DR T and the slow, time intensive, hand compilation processes of Vision 1.02, combined with the fact that these capabilities were conceived as add-ons to the primary application function of sequencing, do not produce composer-useful, song writer-useful or improviser-useful, melodic variations in short times.
These prior art specifications fail to present to a composer or songwriter a corpus of thematic variations to the user. Furthermore, they disallow the user the opportunity to subjectively select their preferred variation/s and disallow the user to store the corpus for later use. Most importantly, the prior art excludes the composer and melody writer from the creative process.